The Damiano Mystery
Third article by José Garzón on major changes in chess during the Renaissance.
The full text, in Spanish, can be downloaded at the end of this summary.
The Damiano Mystery
by José Garzón
Rome, 1512 – When a Portuguese Pseudonym Revealed Modern Chess
In 1512, a small bilingual book appeared in Rome, printed in Italian and Spanish: Questo libro e da imparare giocare a scacchi et de le partite. Its author called himself simply Damiano Portugese — “Damiano the Portuguese.”
That modest volume became the first true bestseller in chess history, reprinted throughout the 16th century and cited by every later theorist.
A Success Born in Spain
Modern research by José A. Garzón and others has shown that the Damiano’s contents were not original.
Its 72 problems, “subtleties,” and descriptions of the new rules all came from an earlier source: the Llibre dels jochs partits dels scachs printed in Valencia in 1495 by Francesch Vicent.
In other words, the Damiano was not an Italian invention at all, but rather the Roman transmission of the Valencian revolution — the moment when the Queen, the modern Bishop, and our familiar game of chess were born.
The Mask of an Author
But who was this enigmatic “Damiano the Portuguese”?
The supposed biography — a certain Pedro Damiano, an apothecary from Odemira — was pure fiction.
According to Portuguese scholar Dagoberto Markl, the name “Damiano” may have been a pseudonym, borrowed from Saint Damian, patron saint of physicians.
Markl identified the likely real author as Judah Abrabanel, better known as Leone Ebreo (“Leo the Hebrew”), the Jewish philosopher and physician who wrote the Dialoghi d’amore.
The emblem printed on the third edition (Rome, 1524) — an eight-pointed star resembling the Abrabanel family crest — strongly supports this theory.
Printers, Borgia, and Valencia
Garzón’s investigation also uncovers a network of printers in Rome tied to Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) and his Valencian physician Gaspar Torrella.
The printers Besicken, Guillery, and Nani, who issued the early editions of the Damiano, belonged to this same Borgia circle.
At the same time, Francesch Vicent, author of the lost Valencian treatise, was exiled in Italy — possibly serving as Lucrezia Borgia’s chess tutor.
It therefore seems clear that the Damiano was, in fact, a revised reprint of Vicent’s book, published under a pseudonym to protect its real author from the Inquisition.
The Masterstroke of a “Converso”
For Garzón, “Damiano” represents the grand master move of a converted Jew: publishing under a false name, preserving the Valencian reform of chess, and concealing his identity for five centuries.
Behind the mask of “the Portuguese” stands an Iberian humanist, moving between Valencia and Rome, exile and Renaissance, faith and survival.
Perhaps the greatest move ever played in chess history didn’t happen on the board —
but in the margins of a book printed in Rome in 1512.
Reference:
Garzón, José A. “La jugada maestra de un judío converso llamado Damiano portugese. El misterio del tratado de ajedrez de 1512.” En Pasiones Bibliográficas II. Valencia: Societat Bibliogràfica Valenciana Jerònima Galés, 2017, 35-46.